The Trump budget $2 trillion error — Business Report

Carrie Doyle | June 3, 2017, 1:28

"The Medicaid cuts being proposed by Republicans and Donald Trump are not only unconscionable but also represent a monumental lie to all of America - particularly Trump voters - who were told that Medicaid cuts would not happen if he was elected", he said in a statement.

Even as I was discussing it, I thought to myself, there is no way budget director Mike Mulvaney is going to say, "I made a colossal mistake in arithmetic, sorry, my bad".

Specifically, Trump proposed giving states the choice between a per capita cap and a block grant to "prioritize Medicaid dollars to the most vulnerable populations".

The Trump Administration budget proposal seeks to cut $610 billion from Medicaid over the next decade.

Panel Democrats charged that Trump's cuts would rip apart the social safety net.

Trump's budget keeps to his campaign pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security pension benefits alone and contains spending increases for the military and veterans, but it treats most of the rest of the government as fair game.

And Medicaid spending would fall from 2 percent of the economy to 1.7 percent in 2027 due to the reductions in Trump's budget.

Trump's budget is simply a proposal.

Furman also says it's been nearly a decade since the last recession, and just about every economist believes another is inevitable over the next decade.

Warren pointed to a recent Congressional Budget Office analysis that found the House-passed AHCA would cut $834 billion from Medicaid and leave 23 million additional people uninsured in 2026 compared to the Affordable Care Act - a law under which she argued the uninsured rate for veterans decreased by almost 40 percent.

King asked how the cuts would account for rising healthcare costs. In agriculture, the proposed budget would limit subsidies to farmers, including for purchasing crop insurance, a move already attacked by farm state lawmakers. A Quinnipiac national survey in March, while House Republicans were trying to replace Obamacare, showed that the public opposed cuts in the federal Medicaid program by a margin of 74 percent to 22 percent.

Mulvaneyalso told the panel it will take cuts to Social Security and Medicare to balance the budget in the future. "It provides no real information on "tax reform" other than to claim it is revenue neutral".